FLUID IDENTITY

May 3rd, 2018

Imagine an actor who came on set and started portraying their character in exactly the same way they had portrayed the last character from a totally different film. Say, jumping from Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Persona’ to Pixar’s ‘Toy Story’.

I smell an awkward flop.

(or an Avant garde masterpiece for reasons that read like masturbatory musings – but that’s another subject)

Is there anything worse for an actor than to be typecast?

To be typecast means that the industry and everyone associated thinks you can only do one thing, one way. End of story. You might as well be doing menial work on a factory line while day-dreaming about big lotto wins and dancing Twinkies.

But to overly identify with any kind of identity is typecasting yourself.

No need for mediocre fame. No need for riches. You can limit yourself all on your own.

And you probably do.

Who doesn’t?

But to what degree?

No one is unlimited. Properly constructed limits give us avenues to function, flourish and progress.

But if your limits are circular, they’re perhaps defeating the purpose and usefulness of limits. If you are doing the same thing day-in and day-out with only tiny variations that are random and meaningless: You’re doing yourself a disservice.

Even a wheel gets somewhere despite the fact that it’s spinning. ( Give it two seconds of thought and you realize that any point on a moving wheel is not a circle but more like an old school telephone chord. Looping but moving.

No, simply moving through time doesn't count. We're talking about that cheesy, over-used verb: growth.)

Have you typecast yourself?

Are you a spinning wheel touching no ground, just doing loops in the same place?

Take a cue from good actors and seek diverse roles for your personality to stretch out in.

But take a step beyond those actors.

Write your own script.